Artist Database

In 1948, at 20 years old, Fred Schimmel left Holland with his parents to emigrate to South Africa. From 1949 to 1957, he worked as a volunteer lecturer at the Polly Street Art Centre in Johannesburg. During this time, he also worked as an assistant for a commercial artist where he learned silkscreen printing. This led him to open his own graphic studio in the early 1950s that produced experimental prints for Walter Battiss. In 1964, he held his first solo exhibition at the Egon Guenther Gallery in Johannesburg. Schimmel founded the Graphic Club of South Africa in 1970 with the aim of promoting silkscreen printing as a fine art medium and to provide the public with ready, affordable good works of art. Schimmel, favouring abstraction in his art, worked in several mediums throughout his career, from silkscreen to pastels to oils.